


Neither Gods nor Men

by anamia



Category: Paris Burning (thecitysmith)
Genre: Chaco Canyon, Gen, Marseille, Paris Burning, Pretoria, Scars, Svalbard, World War II, cape town, his dark materials fusion, the Fens
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-20
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2017-12-20 19:50:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/891167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamia/pseuds/anamia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of ficlets written as tribute to <i>Paris Burning</i>.</p><p>Chapter 6: The Fens smiling (<i>His Dark Materials</i> fusion)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Marseille standing

**Author's Note:**

> These fics are all inspired by and tributes to the brilliant _[Paris Burning](http://archiveofourown.org/works/825130/chapters/1566309)_ , which has as its core premise that cities are personified and walk among humans. You really should check out the fic, because it's really fabulous and exquisitely well written with some top notch worldbuilding.

Marseilles stands at the foot of her cathedral while her people scream. Red marks bloom on olive skin with every bomb dropped but she keeps her lips pressed shut, doing her best to guide her children safely home. She aches to put out the fires herself, aches to run down to the port and coax the sea into helping to save her city and her children, but she stays put. She must let this play out, must let Berlin and his invaders think this is only the start of something greater, must watch her children suffer now in order to secure them a safer future. So she stands and she watches and she cries with every life snuffed out.

Later, when the bombs have stopped coming for the time being, when her children pick through the rubble and wreckage to find lost relatives or shattered belongings, later she walks through the scarred streets of her ancient city. Some recognize her and ask, tears streaming down their cheeks, how she could have let this happen. She bows her head and says nothing. She will not lie to her people, but she cannot yet speak the truth. London and Washington DC play a dangerous game; any word from her might get back to Berlin, poor love-addled Berlin, who has let his love for one blind him to the death of thousands. Marseilles clears streets for her people and helps children find their parents even as the angry red burns on her skin darken and cool into mottled scars. They fit well with the traces left by plague and by war, with the faded marks of chains once placed on her to keep her in line.

Nightfall finds her down by the sea, walking the length of the ruined port. The planes are long gone and even their smoke trails have dissipated. The sea laps quietly over the still smoldering docks, wavelets dousing the hissing embers. Marseilles pauses to dip her hand into the water and the salt burns her raw skin. Soon, she promises her people silently. Soon the bombings will end and the city will be freed. Soon the children of Marseilles will stand and all of France will recall why their national hymn bears her name.

In the distance a little girl wearing a torn white communion dress clambers over the last bit of rubble separating her from her house. Marseilles rises. The tide slowly comes in, snuffing out the last of the fires.


	2. Marseille radiant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -This is directly inspired by a post made by thecitysmith about how Cities are not conventionally beautiful. I wanted to explore that, especially since Marseille is old and she’s been through a lot.
> 
> -The shackle marks, which I think I referenced in the last ficlet, are references to the many rebellions against French rule in Marseille. Eventually two forts, Saint-Jean and Saint-Nicholas were built to keep the people in line. I figure that either Marseille the City would either be personally chained as an example and a warning (not that she stayed chained for long, but a City’s history is visible on their skin) or the presence of the forts and soldiers would express themselves as manacle scars.
> 
> -The opening ceremony referenced here is the opening of Marseille Capital de la Culture, which is going on this year and is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. More info here.
> 
> -I know thecitysmith’s Marseille is male. I had my headcanon before he was introduced and it’s hard to switch. Consider this AU I guess? Maybe I’ll play with the actual canonical Marseille at some point.

Marseille knows she is beautiful.

Her people would disagree. They love her fiercely but they see only her scars, see the vivid brands around her wrists from the manacles she was forced to wear for so long, see the way her nose sits crooked in her face after having been broken too many times. They see the stretch marks on her skin marking years of famine and of plenty, catch glimpses of the whip marks on her back, scars that linger long after the last of the slave docks closed.

(They see her dark skin and the veil covering her hair.)

Her people think the ugliness of her streets explains away the myriad of imperfections on her skin. They tear down crumbling buildings and evict hungry families, close roads and decorate trees, remodel the most visible parts of the city to match their aesthetic standards. Marseille, who is old and has seen so many people, so many governments, so many fashions, lets them do it. She lets them dress her up in pretty gowns and paint her face and polish her nails. She lets herself be displayed and paraded by proud mayors, because they are _hers_ and she loves her children.

(She does not let them uncover her hair or hide her scars completely. Marseille loves _all_ her children and she will not let the most privileged steal her away from all the others.)

Marseille stands with her mayor on the first of January 2013 and welcomes Paris and his president (her president). She smiles prettily and lets her mayor give the speeches. Her people vibrate around her, their excitement filling her being and bringing a grin to her face that she does not bother to hide. Marseille is not so old as to have lost her exuberance, not so broken as to have forgotten the joy of being swept up in collective enthusiasm. She and Paris embrace; his hands tremble and she pretends she does not see. She will support him when he needs it but there is little love lost between them, not when she sees the damage done by iron shackles every time she moves her hands and feels their invisible weight whenever she looks towards the sea and catches sight of the forts designed to keep her in her place. Still, this is not a day for old grudges, and the smile she gives Paris is real, fueled by her people's delight and her own pride.

She has been carefully dressed for the occasion, scrubbed until she is spotless and poured into an evening gown. She has refused the high heeled shoes offered and wears boots instead, fashionable rather than sturdy, with pointed toes that hurt her feet. The reporters call her beautiful and she accepts their compliments with thanks and a grin. She _is_ beautiful, and it has nothing to do with her dress or her shoes or the way they have spread powders across her face to conceal the traces left by epidemic.

When the opening ceremony is over and the visitors have left she takes off her shoes and her borrowed dress and leaves the carefully polished streets. Her bare feet take her deep into the winding streets of her city, down cobbled roads flanked by buildings bent with age and weariness. She bows her head to duck through a low arch and exposes a faint trace left by an enemy sword. More shackle marks adorn her ankles, visible for any who care to look. The reporters who took her picture in all her human splendor would scarcely recognize her now, would purse their lips in horror and disapproval and offer tips to conceal her blemishes.

Marseille does not want their tips or their pity. Marseille knows she is beautiful.


	3. Chaco adapting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I’ve been thinking about former Cities, crumbling ruins of past civilizations. I’m pretty sure thecitysmith answered an ask about them a while ago, but I can’t remember for sure so this is all mostly headcanon.

Chaco hasn't been seen for several hundred years. He was a Capitol once, an important City whose cliffs held the homes of Kings and into whose walls flowed the resources of an empire. He walked proudly through his city and his fields, bedecked in royal finery, basking in the prosperity of his people.

It all came crumbling down around him at once, his prosperity vanishing with twice the speed it had arrived, his people leaving the walls of the canyon in droves and countless others dying in their homes. He felt their anger in his every bone, felt each blow his people struck against each other in his own body, spent days at a time curled up on the floor of his home in agony as the people starved and fought and left. In the span of a few years, a mere blink of an eye for someone sprung from the Earth, his city went from being a capitol to being deserted, a ghost town whose empty homes echoed with the laughter and the screams of those who had once lived there. Chaco stayed in his own home and did not leave for years, expecting to blink out of existence at any moment. A City cannot be killed save by fire, but a City without its people is not a City at all, and Chaco felt his loss in every crevice of his body and every particle of his soul. He howled with pain and with loss, cries mingling with the winds of the desert to create an eerie sound that kept away any who might feel compelled to examine the abandoned city.

Chaco did not fade. Slowly the desert crept in and began to reclaim the canyon. A coyote found Chaco's trembling body and sniffed it, pawing at him as it would prey. Chaco stirred and growled at it, showing his teeth in a way he never would have before. The coyote fled.

Chaco rose at last, began to prowl his abandoned streets and visit his old houses. He could feel himself changing, could sense his nature adjusting itself to his current state of existence. He shed the dirty clothes that hung loosely on his emaciated frame, product of famine and despair, and did not find new ones. When coyotes penetrated his walls he met them with rumbling growls and he did not cook the rabbits he caught to assuage his hunger. At night he cried out to the unfeeling sky, letting loose pain and anger and fear.

The people continued to avoid the former city.

For decades Chaco haunted his deserted city, moving as animals did and losing the ability to speak. His hair grew long and his nails became hard, capable of tearing through animal flesh without help from tools or weapons. He fought the coyotes for dominance and won, marking his territory in ways they would understand. His new scars were left by animal claws rather than human weapons. In his eyes wildness flickered.

When explorers stumbled across the remains of the once great city, Chaco hid, growling low in his throat at the sight of invaders. The part of him that had once been the head of an empire rose to agree with the animal side, and he quivered with the _wrongness_ of these people. They were not his. They did not belong here. His buildings belonged to the desert, not to mankind. Man had abandoned him; it did not deserve a second chance.

Chaco watched the party leave through narrowed eyes and resolved to keep them out next time.

He didn't. He tried, leveraging the desert itself to block the path of those who would study his streets, but Chaco had forgotten the ingenuity and determination of mankind in their long absence and he could not keep them out. He hid instead, crouching behind walls to avoid being discovered. More men came, scientists and tourists, all flocking into the canyon to see the remnants of his once great city. Chaco watched them all from his hiding places. Some of the more perceptive humans sensed his presence and felt uneasy; most passed by oblivious to his very existence. Once Santa Fe came to see and she looked directly at him, meeting his eyes for the first time in centuries. Chaco, gripped still by the wildness of the desert, growled low in his throat and Santa Fe looked away quickly. She left the ruins quickly and did not tell anyone of what she had seen.

With the influx of tourists Chaco could not help but regain some of his former humanity, could not help but be influenced by mankind in a way he had not been for centuries. He walked upright again, though his hair grew wilder than ever and the wildness did not leave his eyes. At night he built fires to roast the rabbits he killed with his bare hands. The coyotes still respected his dominance. The other Cities sometimes speak of him in low voices, wondering to themselves what happened and whether he still lives. Santa Fe ducks her head and says nothing, and the others do not pry. Some things are better left to speculation and curiosity, and even Cities have their demons.


	4. Svalbard quiet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thecitysmith pitched a Cityverse/His Dark Materials crossover. I took the bait. This is (part of) the result.

She is iron and fire and frostbite, is wicked claws and black eyes and waterproof fur, is armor and glaciers and the endless extremes of the seasons. She is hot blood droplets coloring an avalanche, is the cracking roar of breaking ice, is the stubborn tufts of bloodmoss clinging to cracks in the rocks and soaking in sunlight. In her gaze flickers the aurora and under her paws the ice fields extend all the way to the horizon.

Svalbard is quiet. She understands the ways of the hunt, of the prowl, of the wait. She does not waste words where they are not needed, does not fill the stillness with idle noise, does not twitch with discomfort when silence falls across the land like a heavy fur and threatens to suffocate sound forever. She prefers to watch, to listen, to think, prefers to let actions speak rather than words, prefers to let the unspoken remain unspoken. Some, southerners, foreigners,  _humans_ have thought this made her weak, have thought her mind worked as slowly as her tongue. They have tried to trick her or to control her, have thought to offer her worthless trinkets and call them gifts fit for an empress, have grown arrogant or careless in the face of her silence. She receives them all with expression they cannot read and answers with sentences they cannot interpret and common wisdom among southerners holds that the City of the bears is nothing but an addled accident of nature, not to be considered a threat.

Northerners know better. Svalbard is far from addled, far from slow. Within her lives the strength of the avalanche, of the winter winds, of the crushing ocean. She is still only until she is not, and none who have seen Svalbard at war will ever forget the sight of blood staining white fur, of claws ripping flesh, of towering strength and fierceness crashing down upon an enemy. Svalbard wears armor of finest sky iron, older than even the longest cultural memory can recall, rusted and dented and still whole. She cares for her armor as she cares for her children, trusts it to protect her as she would trust a comrade, moves with it as though it were her skin. On her armor are written the scars of her past, the deaths of her children, the cruelties of the climate. Each dent has a story, each scratch a memory, each plate a history, and Svalbard knows them all as she knows her name. When she goes to war she carries her history proudly upon her back, presents her scars to her enemies as though to say, 'you see? I have survived all this and now you think I will not survive you?'

There are those who have thought to teach her politics, to educate her in the ways of humans so that she might no longer give ambassadors the impression of stupidity. Svalbard sends them away without hearing their lessons; she has no use for games. You cannot trick a bear, much less their City, and she will not sacrifice her essence to make humans comfortable. Politics are the domain of creatures who have never tasted the stars or stood upon a cliff of ice to watch the northern lights flicker between worlds. They are not Svalbard's concern.

There is no city on Svalbard, no rows of homes or morass of tunnels. She has no walls or ramparts, no flag or song or official residence. To some she seems to have no borders even, only ice as far as the eye can see. There are those who ask how she can be a City at all, if there is no city for her to represent. Svalbard knows better. She knows where she exists and who she is, knows every rock and crevice and inlet within her boundaries. A City is its people, not its buildings, is made of blood and community and Dust rather than brick and mortar. Svalbard is a City because her children have died for her, lived for her, _bled_ for her. She does not also need them to build for her. Buildings are the hallmarks of humans, and Svalbard is not a human City.


	5. Pretoria surviving

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was inspired by [this](http://thecitysmith.tumblr.com/post/87037535836/what-is-the-content-of-the-20th-century-city-laws-if) post of Thecitysmith’s about the 20th century laws restricting Cities. I am not entirely sure how much this makes sense as a transposition of headcanon, because I am bad at explaining things, but oh well. I enjoyed writing it.

When Pretoria is born, her siblings try to kill her. Not, as will later be claimed, for the color of her skin, or because she shares a name with a man who helped shackle the whole country, but because she is new and young and _hungry_ , hungry in a way that only a City can recognize, her hunger a threat that all established Cities within South Africa's borders can feel in their bones. Pretoria is born of a house fire and a poor woman bleeding to death in childbirth, is born at the peak of winter's drought and baptizes her lungs with smoke.

(Pretoria inhales a lungful of cigarette smoke as she watches her children twist monstrous deeds into civilized ones and wonders if this is what it felt like to be born.)

The Boers call Pretoria a miracle child to her face and a distortion of nature behind her back. They name her after their own and spirit her away, honoring her with gilded shackles to keep her safe from a world that does not tolerate uniqueness. She tries to tell them that it is they, not the world, who cannot tolerate her, but she looks like a child still and they don't listen to a word she says. When Cape Town, older, smugger, more experienced in the ways of imperialists, comes to visit her she asks if they treat their home Cities so poorly. Cape Town sits far enough away that Pretoria cannot make out their expression and laughs.

( _I guess it's not just us_ , Cape Town tells her as in front of them the television shows live footage from the hearings. Pretoria can't see the headlines and Cape Town feels each vote in their bones. Neither moves turn it off.)

Pretoria is put into pretty clothes and paraded before dignitaries, her hair ironed until it hangs flat and her face painted until she looks like a doll. She is the only one of her siblings to be introduced to foreign dignitaries. The bones of her wrists stick out alarmingly as she clasps her hands in front of her and her head aches with the anguish of sundered families. With each new boundary drawn between her people she feels her back split open, blood staining both skin and clothes, gashes of red that show up starkly against her skin and harden into ugly scabs which refuse to heal further. She loses consciousness with Steve Biko and when she wakes she finds Johannesburg in her house, his face bruised and swollen and as encrusted with blood as her back. _I took the body_ , he tells her, his missing teeth mangling his speech until she can barely understand him _. He has never been yours to claim_ , she tells him, as in her head the people scream.

(Cape Town doesn't pick up the phone. Pretoria lets it ring and ring and ring as her bodyguard watches from the other side of the room; she thinks she is glad that she can't see his expression.)

 _It's an honor_ , the officials tell the three newly minted Capitals. _You can all retain your statuses_ , the president says as though he has any control over that at all. _We expect you to cooperate with each other_ , Nelson Mandela tells them firmly, looking from Cape Town to Bloemfontein to Pretoria. _We should have killed you years ago_ , Bloemfontein hisses to Pretoria, who bares her teethand snarls, _You tried. I lived_. Cape Town says nothing, but there is murder in their eyes.

( _We need you to reassure the people that you are not in any danger_ , Jacob Zuma says, right before the cameras turn on. _Your dead would be ashamed of you today_ , Pretoria says as the cameras roll, looking her country square in the eye. She is not allowed to speak in public again.)

Pretoria's wrists are thin enough that they look like they might snap at the slightest provocation. Her clavicles poke up almost through her skin, and her face is drawn and gaunt. She hunches under the weight of her people's long starvation, a hunger as much spiritual as physical, and remembers what it was to be hungry like that. Her victory, if it can even be called that, is made from human lies, a hollow achievement that cannot even be settled silently, not now. She and her siblings can do nothing but watch from their marble prisons as their children act in their names, can settle the matter of Capitalhood only through letters and telephone calls until such a time as they are ready to declare open rebellion. Pretoria's scars still burn from the old laws, still wakes up with blood caking her back some nights, still feels her head pound with grief. The new laws don't make her bleed; she thinks if they did maybe her people would see what they are doing to her.

( _We can't stay here_ , Johannesburg says. _Cape Town has already left_ , Bloemfontein says. _Cape Town always was the most cynical of us all_ , Pretoria says, and lights a cigarette.)

Pretoria is not one of the ancient cities. She is only a mockery of a capital. Her children claim to love her even as they hide her away and show her only under layers of makeup and with all her scars covered. Her siblings look at her with hatred or condescension; unlike her humans they know that she can tell and don't try to hide their feelings. She has never been particularly brave, or particularly good, has only ever been good at one thing: surviving. As the leash tightens around her she looks around at her people, her children, her fellows in suffering who should know better and never will, and makes her choice.

(The fire is considered a tragedy. Pretoria is declared dead and no one feeling the collective loss permeating the city can convincingly argue otherwise. A national week of mourning is declared, and the search for New Pretoria begins.)

(New Pretoria is never found.)


	6. The Fens smiling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I will eventually actually go somewhere with this cityverse/HDM fusion thing, I promise I will. But until I figure out exactly what direction I want to go in, have another character sketch thing.

It was commonly held that the Gyptians didn't have Cities. How could they, landlubbers would ask condescendingly, when they didn't even have houses much less cities? They were a landless people, a race of vagabonds and thieves who couldn't possibly stay in one place long enough to let Cities grow. They were to be pitied, rich landlubber mothers told their children as they led them away from the canals, voices pitched just loud enough that the Gyptians on the shore knew they were meant to overhear. At least the bears have a country, landlubber politicians said to each other. (Smash a bear and a Gyptian together and you have one whole person, landlubbers said to each other, and they laughed at their own cleverness.)

What the landlubbers forgot -- or perhaps what they had never known in the first place -- was that their ways weren't the only possible ways, that their widely held beliefs and assumptions applied only to their world. They were a people of fire and earth, born of stone and temper, valuing dirt over everything including each other, including themselves. Landlubber Cities were anchored to the earth because landlubbers held the earth as sacred in their souls even as they praised God with their voices. But the Gyptians weren't people of stone. They were people of the waters and the marshes, people who made took their homes with them instead of stuffing their lives into their homes, who didn't need to live in a place to know it was theirs. 

The Gyptians had the Fens, and they guarded them fiercely.

The Fens lived deep in the marshes, lived among the eels and the water birds under east Anglia’s endless skies. Their boat was as ancient as they were, polished and gleaming and wild as them. They seemed to flicker like marsh-fire under the light of the moon, melted into the shadows like the best Gyptian smugglers, knew every rivulet and canal in the area and most of the waterways in the country. The Fens spoke rarely but smiled often, a gentle smile that seemed out of place among the mystery and wildness that clung to them even under the bright light of the sun. When they did speak it was usually to children, and Gyptian lore held that no child would ever be lost forever in the marsh, for the Fens would protect them. Every one of the families had stories about children going missing, only to be returned by a silent old Gyptian, full of stories of being rescued and taken into an ancient, gleaming boat and told stories while eating the best fried eel any Gyptian had ever tasted.

Even the Gyptians rarely ever caught more than a glimpse of that boat and its inhabitant; no landlubber had ever laid eyes on that much. Only when the Gyptians mustered did the Fens emerge from the marsh, their boat gliding up to the meeting hall like a wooden eel, the Fens themselves standing at the helm, as much a part of the boat as its planks and propeller. It was said that the draw of assembled humanity was too great for them to resist, for the Fens had been born of the blood and tears and joys of the Gyptian people and they couldn't resist the pull of their children any more than they could call anywhere but the marsh their home. So they made their way out of the marsh-fire and wildness each time the Gyptian people mustered, stepped ashore at last, walked among their children and smiled.

(And if the Fens always seemed uncomfortable inside, or unsteady on solid ground, well, that was only to be expected of a City born to water people.)

 *

(When news came that Lyra, the landlubber child with the yellow hair and the price on her head, was to attend a Roping gossip flew among the Gyptian people as they made their way to the Fens. Would their City show themselves this time, knowing that an outsider was among them? Would they break with centuries of tradition and reveal their existence to this child, this landlubber girl who wouldn’t even appreciate the event? Opinions came fast and thick on all sides, but all were punctuated with thick, eager curiosity. When at last the Costas’ boat glided smoothly to a mooring place by the Zaal it was as though the entire marsh held its breath, waiting to see if the last spot, the one closest to the Zaal itself, would be filled before the Roping started.

No one saw the ancient boat arrive, even those who swore they’d been watching the mooring spot. But when John Faa called the Roping to order and the crowd of people settled into their seats, there sat the Fens, silent and unsteady as ever, and when the landlubber girl went up to the platform with Tony Costa to pay her respects, the Fens looked down from their seat and smiled.)


End file.
